Archive for the 'Stardeath And White Dwarfs' Tag Under 'Soundcheck' Category

For the past decade or so, Wayne Coyne has done everything he can to guarantee his thoroughly unusual psych-rock band, the Flaming Lips, delivers the most life-affirming stage show in music, from rolling out over the audience in a giant inflatable ball while confetti explodes around him to selecting fans to dance onstage in mascot suits each night.

It's all part of a plan to give his legion of fans a unique experience at each encounter -- a goal even more easily achieved this week, as the Lips arrive tonight for the first of two performances (June 14-15) at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Wednesday the Oklahoma group will channel Pink Floyd with its re-tweaked rendition of The Dark Side of the Moon, preceded on Tuesday by a run through their own 1999 neo-classic The Soft Bulletin.

We got ahold of Coyne while on tour in Ireland, where we talked about his classic records, the fact that it's OK to look stupid sometimes, and why a cemetery's actually a great place for a rock show.

You've done Dark Side of the Moon a couple other times live, but it sounds like you've upped the ante for these shows ...

Well, I want to make it different. We're not playing with my nephew's group, Stardeath and White Dwarfs, so we had a bigger ensemble -- they'd do some of the songs, and we'd do some of them. There'd be different singers and stuff -- that was a byproduct of the silly record we did. We recorded Dark Side of the Moon sort of as a flippant B-side that was only going to be available on iTunes. Then it became this thing, and then we were asked if we wanted to play it. Now it's become a part of the Flaming Lips canon -- like, "Yeah, they play Dark Side of the Moon!"

Pardon my tardiness about this one, but I was braving triple-digit heat at Disneyland when this news broke. If you missed it: Finally the Flaming Lips are headed back to Southern California, for a two-night stand at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, each night devoted to a different album.

June 14 finds them once more dusting off 1999's breakthrough The Soft Bulletin, which they also will perform in full over Memorial Day weekend at the Sasquatch! festival in Washington. And on June 15, in a replay of their Bonnaroo set from last summer, the Lips will revive their experimental yet still faithful (and most excellent) version of Pink Floyd's prog-rock staple The Dark Side of the Moon. Anyone else think most or all of that remake's participants -- including Henry Rollins, Peaches and Stardeath and White Dwarfs -- might turn up to assist?

Two-night passes, $80 plus service fees, are on sale Friday, May 6, at 2 p.m. via Ticketfly.com, with single-day tickets, $40, set to go on sale Saturday at 2 p.m. There is a two-ticket limit per person and household; any customers who buy more than two will be automatically refunded without notice.

Also, though this is a back-to-back engagement, there will be no camping. Doors open at 7 each night, with no lineups permitted before 6 p.m. Noise-rock instrumentalist Marnie Stern will open both shows.

[Editor's note:David Hall has been braving Bonnaroo all weekend, filing this Saturday afternoon ... but there wasn't time to post it with the mega slide show attached here until now. He'll be back sometime on Monday with a final wrap-up and more pics. Click the link or any of the pics in this post to view photos of Kings of Leon, Jay-Z, the Dead Weather, the Flaming Lips, the xx, the Temper Trap, the Gossip, Tenacious D, Conan O'Brien, LCD Soundsystem and many more.]

Pardon my tardiness in posting something from out here in Manchester, Tenn., but I'm on my own covering the 9th annual BonnarooMusic & Arts Festival, shooting as many bands as one photographer possibly can, quickly editing them to send home, then trying to catch a few winks before the sun begins baking me alive in my tent at 7 a.m. So until now I haven't had much time to sit down and collect my thoughts.

After Friday's series of explosive sets from Bonnaroo veterans and newcomers alike -- the type that illuminate why this fest is worth traveling halfway across the country and putting up with excruciating heat and humidity -- I can no longer remain mild-mannered about this. Of the many festivals I attend annually (Austin City Limits, Coachella, Lollapalooza, Sasquatch), Bonnaroo is the one I swear by. I haven't missed it in four years, and I intend to venture back to Manchester again and again until my youthful energy completely dissipates.

Things here are just designed to be wacky. For example, the stages are humorously namedThis Tent, That Tent and the Other Tent, and then there's Which Stage and What Stage (that's the main stage, actually). Imagine how that plays out when attempting to direct a less-than-sober friend. Plus, sets tend to go longer (up to three hours in some cases) and later (until about 5 a.m.) than at any other festival, making Bonnaroo as much a shared test of endurance as it is a supremely cathartic experience.

For myself and other 'Roo regulars, bands included, Bonnaroo is a second home -- a place to forget about normal society and have loads of unencumbered fun with roughly 80,000 other music enthusiasts. And it was with this distinct sense of fellowship that Kings of Leon -- kicking off another round of touring behind their breakthrough album Only by the Night -- set the bar high for all headliners to come this weekend with their performance on the massive What Stage.

Great stuff just keeps coming to the Wiltern this year. Already we're in the thick of the three-night stand from Wilco, with gigs from Phoenix (June 28), Son Volt with Cowboy Junkies (July 16), Elbow (July 22), Jarvis Cocker (July 27), Gomez (Aug. 3) and Lykke Li (Aug. 4) all on deck.

And now there's more.

Sonic Youth, which issued its 16th studio effort (The Eternal) earlier this month, headlines Sept. 29 at the art-deco L.A. theater, while Snow Patrol's coming stateside trek ends there on Oct. 20, with Plain White T's opening. (That latter bill also will stop Oct. 17 at San Diego State's Open Air Theatre.) Both of those Wiltern shows go on sale Saturday, June 27, at 10 a.m.

Also coming to the L.A. venue and on sale at that time: Scottish singer-songwriter Paolo Nutini, whose new album (Sunny Side Up) is garnering plenty of acclaim, Sept. 11 ... veteran contemporary folkie Tracy Chapman, Aug. 20 ... and Down with the Melvins, Aug. 15. Note: All Wiltern shows are on sale exclusively through LiveNation.com.